


know you're not alone / this place will be your home

by ticoyuu



Series: home is where you are [2]
Category: Persona 5, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, mentions of p5 characters, this isn't actually a songfic though, whoever said songfics are last decade can SUCK MY MARA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 17:36:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15199961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ticoyuu/pseuds/ticoyuu
Summary: In an alternate universe where Akira failed to overcome Yaldabaoth and lost both his friends and his world, countless years after the end of his love’s human lifetime, demon king Abel finds a familiar face while traversing the in-between.Optional sequel toi’m going home (to the place where i belong).





	know you're not alone / this place will be your home

**Author's Note:**

> today's mood: [home](https://youtu.be/aF-Z1A0ujlg) by phillip phillips covered by the piano guys. hot damn is there a more satisfying instrument combo than piano and cello?? i came across the song and was struck by the writing hammer and now it's 3am and i'm dying squirtle 8;;;;;;;;3/ 
> 
> ADDITIONALLY i am at my most shameless at ass o'clock so lemme take this opportunity to put it out there that i LOVE interacting and comments n stuff and i'm literally always a slut for discussion on my work, the source material, HCs, whatever
> 
> aaand without further ado pls enjoy my midnight self-indulgent fic, nya

You’ve just lost your world and your friends and the last thing hidden in Pandora’s Box has already flown the coop.

You are Akira Kurusu; Joker of the Phantom Thieves, holder of infinite human potential, and you fucked up and you lost everything and you can’t pinpoint when or where the error was made. The universe ripped itself apart at the seams, Metaverse blending erratically into the reality (this is _reality,_ however much you’d like to deny it) that’s become the Metaverse and the Metaverse has become reality.

You don’t want to think about it, it makes your head hurt.

...Your heart, too. No matter how much of an idiot Ryuji could be or Ann given to excitable gossip and even with Makoto and Haru and Yusuke and their quirks and strangeness, and Mona’s nagging, even; your inevitable parting you’d always imagined far down the road and on good terms with laughter had and some tears shed, maybe, but most of all it would be a celebration.

You’d _never_ imagined it to be like this -- everything ripped away in minutes after an increasingly panicky few hours that was supposed to have been your little band’s last hurrah.

 

There is sadness that’s temporary no matter how deep, and then there’s the existential, soul-crushing despair just starting to set in like rigor mortis as the initial shock starts to dull. You are here or there or everywhere at once; this place could’ve been the Velvet Room or it could’ve been a tortured inmate’s home for his last days. It’s ragged and warped like humanity in its final hour, seemingly unrecognizable but vestiges of broken decor and former human glory stands here and there and reminiscence plays unbidden like a credits roll every time you glance at one, unwilling and unwanting to accept it. Perhaps if this is the Velvet Room you’d grown familiar with, its hanging chains and steel gates that had lately ceased to seem deathly but instead inviting, _empowering,_ it will also serve as your grave.

That’s irony at its finest and _oh,_ it stings like a broken social link and tastes like bitter loss. This is your world flayed open and bleeding and your friends paid the price and only you were somehow spared (you’d give to _anything_ to know why you alone still exist in flesh and blood and conscious thought) in this silent and bleak shadow of a Velvet Room where Arsene does not answer your call.

The time you spend in there, afterwards, stretches on to the beyond and you lose the ability to tell the passage of time. Nothing changes and the surrounding chaos gradually stills and the Sea of Souls no longer rolls in waves and instead lies still and calm like the lake you passed by daily with Mona.

It is unendingly still and in the empty silence of order returned, your mind grows dull as time passes; the curtains closing on the theatre of your regrets and pain and the life you, Akira Kurusu and Joker of the Phantom Thieves, had once lived.

 

.

.

.

You are Abel and you are the king of kings and ruler of demons, and because Akira reminded you that you are human and you love like a human, you grieve his loss like one, too. He’d passed when he was frail and grey and you left nothing behind in the world he’d made your home, because the part of you that he held, because _yeah,_ he held your heart, died with him and you’d nearly forgotten that human lives are so short and fragile. (You didn’t, or maybe refused to, notice the grey replacing lustrous black year by year, the lines as they marked time’s toll on his skin, the precise moment he stopped wearing those rounded glasses as a fashion statement and instead wore them because he needed to and then suddenly he was gone. In hindsight’s perfect vision score, you could go through and mark countless key points and it torments you, the what-if’s; could you have kept him from dying with the at least theoretically limitless power pulsing in your veins? Eternity is long and you’ve got so much of it to go, and you really hate the thought of spending it without him.)

Instead, you sought comfort in the primal ways, and returned (you hate to think of it like that, now, but you flee your home-no-longer-home like an asylum seeker who’d run out of time) to where your magic could blaze, unbound and free.

You spend an age in the demon realm afterwards, forgetting your grief in the hunt and then sharing warmth with loyal demons who come to offer tribute to their lord and king.

You feel for a time like you’ve returned home, but through the scorching suns and coursing energy crackling at your fingertips, the knowledge is there, cutting like knives and undeniable, that you’re here and Akira is there, wherever his soul’s gone after death you don’t know _anything_ but the certainty that he’s beyond your reach. Sometimes you feel a faint warmth and it tugs but it’s more a feather-light tickle and it’s here and there and in and out but always dim and no, he’s gone because humans don’t come back and it’s probably just phantom pain after losing your other half. You hate the feeling of helplessness more than anything and it’s unfamiliar to the you who is King of Bel, who can do anything, and suddenly it’s frustrating and tastes like anxiety more than anything and calls up shadow caricatures cast from flickering candlelights of old memories that haven’t surfaced for years.

 

Loss; it’s bitter and acrid and if catching your foes and tearing them limb from limb on a hunt feels like thrill and pulsing energy and the blaze of life, then the strange and unfamiliar concept of human mortality tastes like the traces of magnetite left behind when you’re too slow; pungent with fear-scent but dull and stale because you missed your cues and your prey ran fast and far. You grind your sharp canines; angry, and it draws crimson from your own lips in frustration but seals over immediately because you bleed magic rather than blood, and small nicks leave you none the wiser.

Demons return to the Sea of Souls when they die and return anew like the shifting of tides, but for all the posturing and theorizing humans claim, they don’t know what happens to their own after death and as much as you’d like to, as Abel, demon king with the power of ancients, you’re tragically not any more informed.

 

.

.

.

Counting in human years, it’s another half a century, at least, before a surging flame begins to lick at the walls of your jail of self-imposed apathy, and _oh,_ it does hurt when a curious spark comes close to singe your hand and another sizzles on black curls that haven’t changed for an age and then some, but more than that, it carries life, exuding an overflow and basking in its own energy that pulses like a heartbeat and you slowly come to, the sting reminding you that _yeah,_ there’s still life you possess.

It’s mesmerizing and because everything is buried for the time being in the sleep-murked depths of your consciousness, all that those flames singing with energy and crackling with life show to you is magic in all senses of the word and you’d like so very much to reach out and gather them to yourself.

It’s probably a good thing that your body won’t obey and careen you into the blossoming canopy of mesmerizing flames, but that’s not something you’re currently able to consider so instead you remember this prickly feeling as frustration, and you sluggishly try to move your parts as they’re re-energized by the flow of unrestrained chaos _(life, that’s what it’s called)_ into this space of perfect order, one by one.

 

Then the canopy draws up and bursts into shining embers that rain down like fireworks and suddenly your mind’s eye draws up the image of you and your friends in yukatas and then you’re drenched in a sudden downpour but laughing as you wring buckets from your hems while Yusuke is his usual quirky self, Ann smacks Ryuji and Mona yowls, none too happy with the wet.

This time you do reach out and catch one and it scorches a bit when you close your fingers around it, but it seems to sink through your skin and settle deep in your core, and each one is a live ember and the sting is _good_ and feels like _life_ and soon you’re whirling and jumping to catch these dancing sparks full of joy to reclaim. Before long you’re laughing and breathless edging on dizzy, but inside you’re all warm and it feels like you’re a furnace now, stoked full of life.

The magic spreading softly through your bones is familiar like a lifelong companion, and as hard as you search your memories (your name is Akira Kurusu and you were Joker of the Phantom Thieves), nothing relevant surfaces. Despite that, you implicitly know and it’s a truth etched deep in the records of your soul that your history is twined inseparably with the owner of these sparks and now that you’ve had a taste of this magic you wouldn’t give it up for the world.

 

This young man overflowing with magic that tastes like pyres and primal urges perks up full-body when you catch up to him and his hands shake a little like he wants to touch you but can’t quite believe his eyes, but you’re here and warm and full with the heartbeat of magic that you _know_ comes from him and you don’t quite understand any of this but you take his slim wrists and hold them firmly, and when you breathe a breathless little laugh, a puff of red sparks lingers on your breath and he catches it and then his voice is shaking with peals of laughter, more of the same sparks ghosting from his figure to tumble around his head and he sounds a little sad but more than that he’s _joyful_ and it’s infectious.

 

His eyes glimmer and when you point out their wetness he sniffs loudly and says _No they’re not,_ with a hint of childishness, but forgoes it immediately in favor of scrubbing his eyes with a sleeve before tears fall and a concession of _I haven’t cried in like, two centuries_ follows shortly after.

In this space with only you and the familiar stranger who freed you, it’s still dark and you can see nothing beyond the softly glowing sparks lighting up you and he, but it feels safe; you feel safe and you even though you remember the loss of your world yet don’t remember him, you feel like your soul does and everything else is insignificant in the face of your desire to spend endless lifetimes at his side. And somehow you’re here now, the two of you, and you _still_ haven’t got a clue why you feel like this, but it’s etched in your soul and carried, integral, in the magic you breathed in that it’s fine even so, and you just _know_ that when this magic broke your soul from its unmeasurable isolation it also changed you, and now like him, you’re timeless; with eternity to spend rediscovering your relationship or forging a new one if the past decides to remain where it is.

 

.

.

.

Much later when you wonder, offhand and casual, about how he found you in your prison Abel just shrugs, because it was completely by chance.

 _Maybe it was a miracle,_ you say with your voice mild and he turns his nose up, dramatic and haughty, and replies _I don’t believe in those_ and those words speak volumes to a lifetime you don’t remember, but one red sun is setting and the other has already gone below the horizon and several Hares of Inaba and a singular Neko Shogun in comically archaic armor perfectly sized for its comical proportions sleep curled in a fluffy pile at your feet and Abel, just as catty and flexible, tucks himself comfortably against your side and leaning into each other, the both of you doze off in perfect contentment.

 

The demon realm is rough and it’s wild and often it’s bloody, but Abel, lord of demons and you, your name is Akira Kurusu and you are simultaneously his consort queen of Bel and also part of him; when his magic roars in hunger the two of you hunt together and Abel yells over the clamor, _This is SO much more satisfying than burning shit alone_ and you can’t help but grin back at him and then your reply to his thunder is the fire that poured from him and settled in your core back in that dark soul room; later, when you take some of his magnetite and he takes some of yours, the pleasure is unbelievably intense and it’s fulfilling like nothing else and you’re sent soaring on wings borrowed without need for return.

Abel’s long since made his home in the realm of demons and now he shares it with you and sometimes, when you look out over the sweeping expanses of natural terrain and it strikes you as terrifically wild and terribly beautiful just like its king, and then you turn to find him floating up behind you and red and blue flowers unfurl in the suddenly lush grass and burst into bloom with a snap of his fingers, and he tilts his head and winks and you love him so, so much.

 _You’re not alone and I’m not alone now._ Those words also speak volumes and these you understand, and he turns to you with a sweeping gesture as he speaks, flipping that ridiculous mantle over his arm. It shifts fluidly like sand in a vial and settles back in place. You chuckle when he stares at it, perturbed, and end up startling him out of the staring match he's having with his own magic when you put the rest of the sentiment into words.

 

 _Yeah,_ you say.

 _We’re here together, and-_ His eyebrows draw together a little, almost imperceptibly but doesn’t interject anything and so you continue:

 

_I love you. We have eternity to make it together and here, it already feels like home._

The smile he beams at you is radiant, and you feel like all your loss and suffering was worthwhile if this is what it led up to, and wondering about him isn’t necessary because you're certain he feels the same, and it’s indelible.

**Author's Note:**

> there will probably not be more of this particular au from me unless my balls suddenly QUADRUPLE IN SIZE and i acquire mad porn writing skillz  
> :pensive: :pensive: pensive:


End file.
